In 2018, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) members passed a resolution, submitted by its Firearms’ Committee, warning of the threat posed by untraceable firearms made through 3D printing and unfinished frames and receivers. The IACP Resolution stated, “The availability of online code for the 3D printing of firearms and firearm parts increases the risk that dangerous people, including felons, domestic abusers, and other people prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law, as well as terrorists and criminals around the world, will evade background check requirements and obtain a firearm.”

Fast forward to today. According to estimates based on data from ATF’s National Tracing Center, approximately 10,000 privately manufactured firearms (PMFs) or “ghost guns” were recovered by law enforcement in 2019. The Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Los Angeles Field Division reported in January 2021 that 41 percent of the division’s cases involve ghost guns, and a May 2019 statewide analysis in California found that 30 percent of all guns recovered in connection with a crime in the state did not have serial numbers. Baltimore Police Deputy Commissioner Sheree Briscoe stated that the Baltimore, Maryland, Police Department has recovered 126 ghost guns in 2020, 15 of which were involved in homicides and shootings, a 400 percent increase from the previous year. As of mid-May 2021, she stated that her department confiscated 83 such firearms and expects to seize 250 by year’s end. In 2019, Washington, DC, Metropolitan police recovered 115 ghost guns, a 360 percent increase from 2018, and Philadelphia police saw ghost gun recoveries in that city rise 152 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Ghost guns are weapons increasingly used by criminals and terrorists both nationally and internationally.